I've seen a lot of diaries on the subject over the past few months -- I quit reading most of them long ago, although I'll occasionally read a diarist I like, however much I may disagree with them on this issue.
To all those diarists I'd like to say something.
I'm sorry you're disappointed with Barack Obama, sorry you're frustrated and fed up and feeling betrayed.
Listen. I don't know what you were expecting when you voted for him, but I really wish you'd asked me first. He was my Senator. I could have told you -- he really IS a centrist. He really IS the bi-partisan Boy Scout. He supports capitalism and free markets -- you'll get a few regulatory restraints, but he ain't gonna be ushering in any socialist workers' paradise.
I made my deal with the devil. Once the windmill thrashed Kucinich, I threw my support to Obama and didn't look back. Do I wish he was a better Progressive? Absolutely. But he isn't, and he never was, and despite all the calculated campaign vagueness full of blanks for you to fill in with whatever hopes and dreams you harbored, he never claimed to be. So deal with it.
But I'll tell you another f*cking President I didn't have much use for.
In 1976, I supported Jimmy Carter purely on Hunter Thompson's say-so. There's an old Rolling Stone article titled something like The Great Leap of Faith laying around out there somewhere in which, to the best of my recollection, the Good Doctor explained how he just didn't have it in him for another orgy of hard-core campaign coverage of the level that spawned Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, but judged Carter to be an honest and competent mensch who would do us alright. All through the primaries I'd been uneasy about him, but in the end I went for the peanut farmer on the recommendation of the drug addled father of gonzo journalism.
Four years later I was wondering what the fuck I had been thinking.
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From John Kennedy's death until Barack Obama's inauguration, every Democratic President we elected came from south of the Mason-Dixon line, and it showed. Democrats who, of necessity, established themselves espousing a platform conservative enough to attract the votes of Dixiecrats. Not exactly the flowering of liberalism, and impossible to know if they really meant it or just had to do it to get elected. And Carter was right there in the middle of them.
While Carter talked a good-enough show on social issues (despite his father having been an anti-New Deal state representative), his past -- including accusations of thinly-veiled appeals to segregationist sentiments in his gubernatorial campaign in 1970, offered little reassurance to the uneasy. He emphasized ethical standards and high moral behavior on entering office, but his repeated display of his born-again Southern Baptist bonafides raised concerns of cracks opening in the revered Wall of Separation. And although he trumpeted a foreign policy grounded in human rights, he continued to prop up the ruthless regime of the Shah of Iran until it blew up in his face.
He was a fiscal conservative, which meant, even in the Democratic party, that the worker got screwed. The remedy for the "stagflation" that began to cripple the economy in his term hinged on sacrificing employment to keep inflation in check. Yet before it could be reined in (well after he left office), inflation was clipping along in double digits. The price of that house you hoped to buy receded before you into the unattainable distance. Prices ratcheted steadily skyward as your paycheck struggled to keep up.
Under Carter, the regulatory framework began to be dismantled, with the initial deregulation of the trucking and airline industries. Under Carter, the capital gains tax rate was cut from 39 to 28 percent. His control of his party in Congress -- enjoying massive majorities in both houses -- was so weak that a Republican-sponsored version of a so-called "supply-side" tax cut was passed by the Senate, but thankfully fell apart under veto threat.
Oil production cuts by OPEC drove gas prices through the roof, and once again resulted in shortages and long lines at the pump. Domestic oil producers demanded -- and won -- removal of price controls that would now allow them to charge the same prices as OPEC charged. The counter-argument that OPEC was an anti-competitive, price-fixing cartel fell on deaf ears. The windfall profits tax implemented in exchange did little to placate Americans scraping to fill up the tank as the oil companies raked in big profits. And then came the suddenly-wealthy Arabs from OPEC countries buying up U.S. assets with their oil profits.
Although I personally didn't have a problem with the proposed long-term remedies to this energy crisis, involving restrained and judicious driving in cramped, fuel-efficient, cars; adoption of alternative fuels; and reliance on public transportation, it didn't set well with a public that wanted to commute 50 miles to work in 455 cubic-inch GTOs. The future offered way too much bicycle and not nearly enough tire-squealing Mustang. The early, high-maintenance solar systems promised endless hours of tweaking to maintain something resembling a comfortable temperature. A home solar-heat-storage system comprised of a wall of water-filled plastic milk jugs did little to warm the hearts of decorators.
In far too many ways, to far too many people, life in the Presidency of James Earl Carter, Jr. sucked.
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I didn't vote in the 1978 midterms. What was the point? I wasn't going to unseat Chuck Percy or Bob Michel, and incumbent governor Jim Thompson looked to be a lock to steamroll Michael Bakalis' lackluster campaign. And in the local races in our district and county, the Republicans were all unopposed, every fucking one of them. I stayed home and groused at the election coverage. Despite the dismal situation, while the Democrats lost a few seats, they still maintained sizable majorities in both houses of Congress (S, H), fat lot of good it did Carter.
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By 1980 I'd had all I could take of Jimmy Fucking Carter. I stormed into the polling place that November, jerked the curtain shut in anger, and cast my vote of protest for Barry Commoner. I'd show those bastards.
I didn't get Barry Commoner, not that I ever expected to.
I didn't even get Jimmy Fucking Carter.
Although I had no inkling of the implications of it at the time, I got Ronald Fucking Reagan.
Ronald.
Fucking.
Reagan.
I don't think I need to say too much about how that worked out for me.
For all Carter's faults, there's nothing that makes him look better than a retrospective view from the top of the trash heap of every liberal program and policy Reagan and the Bushes could eviscerate in the 20 years they were handed. But I will say this:
There are a lot worse things out there today than Ronald Fucking Reagan. Think Mitt Fucking Romney. Mike Fucking Huckabee. Ron Fucking Paul. Eric Fucking Cantor. Darrel Fucking Issa, Newt Fucking Gingrich. Sarah Fucking Palin.
I know many of us are not particularly thrilled at the way this presidency -- which stormed toward the campaign finish line so full of promise for a new era of people-first progressive policies -- has turned out so far, with the wind veritably stripped from its sails by events beyond its control before the first votes were even cast.
But disappointing though this has been, trust me, there are outcomes lurking out there, forces that, if allowed to seize the mantle, will make you ache with longing for lukewarm centrism. This is not the time to tune out and drop out. This is no time for sitting on the sidelines or teaching anyone any third-party lessons.
This is no time for Barry Commoner.